Looks like you are spoiling for a fight.... Greeners...hah, I never heard that term but I think it must mean people who have a view to not damaging the environment.

Well my choice of words might not be the best but that crowd is more likely to have their own off-grid system. Not spoiling for a fight.

A lot of people are installing solar panels to help with their electric bills too.

That's the reason for this thread. I want to know who has an off-grid system at their house.

Just installing solar panels will not give you anything you could use. The battery systems are a big expense that is on going. A lot of people don't understand what it takes to install a useable solar system.

I think I can see a misunderstanding here when it comes to solar, at least when thinking about the situation in Germany, so far the world leader in photovoltaic installations, usually on the roofs of privately owned buildings. (In 2010, 43.5 % of all worldwide solar installations were on top of German roofs, USA 3.0%).

99% of all these people do not put these solar panels on their roofs to become independent from the grid, butto feed their homemade energy back into the grid and get payed for it, that way reducing their electric bills, as Don mentioned.

The people I know don't want to get paid so much, but just to generate almost enough electricity for their own use. When they are generating excess, the power goes onto the grid; when not generating enough power it comes back from the grid. One can think of the grid as acting like a battery.

Our grid is pretty good, at last compared to the, hmm, sorry, medieval state of the US grid, so over here it is not about getting away from the grid by solar.

How much you get payed for your homemade energy is laid down in the Renewable Energy Act; it depends not only on the total output of your installation but mainly on the year of installation.

An example, from Wiki: For a 30 kWp installation, established in 2004 (when solar panels still were more than three times as expensive as today) you are compensated with € 0.57 per kWh, while for a year 2011 installation it is down now to € 0.29 / kWh. The average compensation for 2011 was € 0.40/kWh, a total sum of € 7.7 billion. This sum has to be payed by everybody using electric energy, means prices for energy are constantly going up; clean energy has its price!

In 2010, Germany had photovoltaic installations of 17,193 MWp (Spain 3,784, Japan 3,622, Italy 3,494, USA 1,167); today in Germany it is up to about 32,509 MW.